Reaching the living room, Cale noticed the small changes in the room instantly. The present memory conflicted with the familiar past memory.
Cale's eyes narrowed to slits at the now prominent blue fire lashing with invigorated vigor inside the fireplace.
Due to a lack of information, there was no way for him to truly know anything in this place. So he could only guess a bit as to what it could be.
'It isn't all blue.' The peak was still an ordinary yellow-orange that he was very familiar with.
'But if that fire becomes all blue....'
Would he for certain reasons die without fail?
Thinking like this, he worked his head for an escape plan. In the end, his train of thought fell to the symbols he saw back.
"A sofa....A stove....A toilet and a bed."
Those were all the symbols on the keypad.
But he eyed for something else, he leered specifically at the squares below the symbols that repeated, only with small alterations each time of course.
Each symbol had a number laid next to them. Highest being 5.
Cale's gaze fell on the sofa similar to what the symbol depicted.
There were five seat cushions on the sofa, and those cushions were likely the key to the code.
"So I need to spot some sort of discrepancy with the sofa?"
What was different and how that difference could be used to aid.
The difference was hilariously easily spotted. The cushion at the arm of the sofa was flung on the messy floor, red liquid staining it.
Despite spotting the difference. Cale didn't move. His mind froze for a small moment, wondering again on how to put this information to good use.
He found the clue, but it wasn't like it told him what number to associate it with.
"Unless?"
Finding an idea to use, Cale made his way to the cushion and flipped it.
"....."
A mess was all he called it.
Just a messy damp of a waste with no clue happily telling him anything.
"I swear they love giving me basically nothing to work with." Grumbling like a goblin, he looked at the scene again. More objectively and more calmly.
He stood there for what felt like forever, outside the clouds moved with slow and steady rhythms, sun blazing over them with status.
Pondering and using his brain to solve a puzzle that seemed easy in concept but not being able to solve it did hurt his ego slightly.
Sighing and resetting his boiled mix of feelings surging at the back of his throat. Cale took a seat at the tail of the sofa, the corner.
At the point of contact, he felt it firsthand. The soft, rich in comfort and rich to accommodate his buttocks cushion that rotted in this world merely telling a story.
He looked at the room again, upon seeing it again, he could envision just how beautiful it could be if it just weren't a mess. Cale caressed the soft cushion that will leave him eventually.
Prick!
"....?" His fingers twitched at the foreign object prickling at his sensitive and somewhat cold skin.
Brushing his fingers on the surface again, he felt the prickling again, only this time he was less surprised.
Into the gaps of the cushions he dug, finding something scaly prickle him again, he pinched it with his thumb and index and dragged it up from its hiding spot.
It was a reptile, a reddened lizard that was definitely not natural for its skin. Poking at its solid state, he made the decision to pronounce it dead.
"Hold on, isn't this frozen?" Taking note of the cool dead skin, he waved the frozen lizard in the air.
Cale winced at the light hanging above, instinctively bringing the hand holding the red reptile to block it.
For a moment, the silhouette of the reptile duped his mind. When light shone on its body, it turned into a deep black. Its shape familiar.
"Ah?" Eyes widened slowly, jaw opening as slow as a turtle, exclaiming with pure curiosity.
"This? Might it be?"
It was then that he realized a crucial part of the sofa and the reptile. They were one and the same.
His mouth opened, strained like his bones that creaked every step on the way.
"If the corner of the sofa is a curling tail....And the tail is the end....Then this spot must be '5,' right?"
He muttered his thoughts to the world, whilst stealing a glance at the toilet paper scattered all over.
Moving it from its spot, he coated his hand with red liquid he found in the room and steadily drew a '5' on the bog roll.
Tucking the roll of paper into his warm embrace, he left the living room, speed-walking his way to other rooms as fast as humanely possible.
It was a long process, but within that long process, the sun never settled. Just hanging above as if it were just a fake....Which technically was fake in all respect.
Creakkkk—!
A door creaked open, one of the only few that were open in this entire cabin.
What revealed to Cale behind the veils was a kitchen, one old with mold on the counters and one that reeked of leaking oil that had gone bad.
A room devoid entirely of what he thought to be modern. Despite it definitely being one. Going in, he didn't try to look around the room, knowing that time was of the limited essence.
Instead, he immediately walked over to the stove dependent on its one and only overrated source of energy. The stove had 4 circular black plates with miniscule ridges inside. The smallest plate being lower right while its neighbor was the largest. Second smallest being the top left while the second largest was top right.
Overall a familiar and simple sight he remembered in the far past when this stove was the coolest thing he had ever witnessed in his younger days.
'God I feel old.'
Cale coughed a few times before settling his gaze for good.
Immediately Cale noticed that the second largest plate on the stove was still heated and very much on. The other plates were cool at room temperature.
The difference was spotted. A simple difference at that.
Cale threw away any complicated thinking and decided to think simpler, more at face with the situation instead of beating around the bush.
'Is it the knobs?'
Cale gazed down at the white knobs. There were six knobs he could turn, two of which were meant for the oven. With hasty desire his fingers flailed and numbered each one.
"....."
He stopped at the last knob which was, surprise surprise, the second largest plate, also courting to be his likely right answer as well.
But it was because of that that his mind froze. Pupils shook slightly at the haunting realization that gripped his heart so tightly that he felt like it stopped for a moment, skipping their organized rhythm that they were always inclined to fall in line for.
"....Aren't there....Only five on the keypad?"
Chilled words left his chapped lips, nausea piled onto the back of his throat all in the same instance.